Hong Kong was such a change from Beijing. For starters there was no chance of frostbite, which was always going to be a bonus. We got there late in the evening and stayed on Kowloon island. The building from the outside looked very scary - a multi-storey that looked very very run down. It wasn't much better till we actually got into the hostel itself which was on the 13 floor. It was a bit of a squeeze but fine for what we needed.

Kowloon that time of night is crazy, shops are all open all hours and have men stood outside on the street trying to persuade you to come in. They weren't as pushy as in Beijing though. We got up early as we only had one full day there and headed straight for the pier to get the ferry to Hong Kong island. I was in desperate need of a Starbucks and was lucky enough to find one down there. Ten minutes later we arrived on the other side and stood at the bus stop patiently waiting for the bus to bring us up to the Sky tram.

The driver in the cab reminded me of the guy out of the original pink panther movies and he thought we were hilarious turning up at the bus stop at nine in the morning when the first bus didn't leave till ten. Bless him, he got out of his cab and ran over to tell us and didn't even expect us to get into the cab instead. We wandered round the local shopping centres eyeing up the Gucci, Armani, Tiffany, Vendi merchandise and I decided I'm definitely marrying a footballer and that's where I'm having my honey moon. Everywhere over there is amazingly clean and we were very happy to see "no hawking" signs up everywhere.

We got the sky train up to the sky tower. It goes up at at least a 45 degree angle up the mountain behind the huge tower buildings around Hong Kong Pier. The views from there were amazing even if it was a little bit hazy. From there we headed through Hong Kong to get to a buddhist temple, I can't remember the name of it now but it was filled with locals coming in to offer prayers. They all light about ten incense sticks and leave them to burn, you could barely see five feet in front of you for the cloud.

We walked back to the Harbour through Soho, not all that at midday but had to be done.

We took the next available ferry out to Lantou island which boasts the largest buddha in the world I think. There's something like 250 steps up to him - forget lbt classes Shaunagh, this trip is the best work out I've ever had. We were on the very top of a mountain there and all you could see all around was almost tropical vegetation again very beautiful but not nearly as cosmopolitan as Hong Kong island.